


The University of Rhode Island Audio-Visual Society, Class of 1978

by okaynowkiss



Category: The Conjuring (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:17:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5469590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynowkiss/pseuds/okaynowkiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the long aftermath of her mother's possession, Andrea Perron looks for her own place in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The University of Rhode Island Audio-Visual Society, Class of 1978

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilybeth84](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilybeth84/gifts).



> I had fun revisiting this movie, which I really do love, so I hope you enjoy this, lilybeth84! Happy Yuletide :)

After the exorcism, when Andrea’s mom was recovering in the hospital, her body twisted and battered but her eternal soul intact, if the Warrens were to be believed, April asked, “Is the bad thing gone for good?”

“I think so,” Andrea told her, holding April in her lap in the hospital chair next to their mom’s bed. Their dad was asleep, his head resting on his arms where he was leaned over the bed from his seat, trying to stay close enough to protect her even now. April cuddled up closer to Andrea, her little limbs growing heavy. Andrea pet her hair and thanked God that April was resting. April was too old really to be held in this way, but Andrea didn’t mind how uncomfortable it was.

At the time Andrea was worried about April most of all, the youngest of them, the one the thing inside their mother had almost succeeded in killing.

But in the end, it was Christine who got the worst of it.

 

+

 

When they weren’t trying to forget it had ever happened, they referred to it as April had: the bad thing. It meant both the events of that one awful night, and the dark entity that had caused them. That thing that leapt from the top of wardrobe onto Andrea and Cindy, after Cindy’s haunted sleepwalking, and began to feed on them with sickening glee. Andrea had felt an unfathomable part of herself beginning to peel away from her. But it hadn’t happened, the monster had been interrupted.

When Nancy had something she wanted to talk about, she would curl up under Andrea’s covers, and bother her while she tried to do her homework. “What?” Andrea asked one night. “This is due tomorrow. What is it?” It was the last week of high school, one last paper to turn in and two more finals, and then Andrea would walk across the stage and get her diploma, one step closer to getting out of this podunk town and joining the real world.

Nancy flicked her eyes to the open door, and spoke in a low voice. “Andrea, it really happened, right? The bad thing?” It had been almost a year. “Because sometimes I think... It’s crazy, you know, it’s crazy. What if we just... want to believe it? What if there was just something wrong with Mom, in her head? The way there’s something wrong with Christine now?”

Andrea went to the bed and pulled Nancy to her, shushing her and stroking her hair. “Shh, it’s okay, don’t cry. That wasn’t Mom. I mean, don’t you still see them sometimes? Rory, and the others?”

All of them were troubled by the memories, and there were still actual, literal ghosts around the property, but nothing malevolent. They couldn’t afford to sell the house and move; they’d be homeless if they left. Their dad felt so guilty about this that Andrea always tried to be nice about it.

Their mom put on a brave face, and seemed actually happy most of the time, but now and then Andrea heard her alone in the bathroom, failing to muffle her sobs. She had come so close to killing April.

And for whatever reason, it was Christine who became sick with it. It was as though a piece of her was stuck back in that night, close to her own death and the potential deaths of everyone she loved. She woke up screaming most nights, with such violent night terrors that she eventually had to be put on medication to relax her so she could rest. It didn’t work: she’d wake up in the mornings more tired than when she’d gone to bed, having been trapped in nightmares without the ability to throw off the covers and scream to wake herself up. She hadn’t been to school in months, and was like a zombie half the time, desperate for sleep and terrified.

It was getting very difficult to deal with, and Andrea was worried that once she left for college, without the extra help her parents might have to send Christine somewhere. She’d heard them talking about a sanitarium.

 

+

 

At the end of the summer, Andrea’s car packed with all her stuff for college, she couldn’t get a moment alone with Nancy, so she had to speak to her in whispers while they hugged goodbye on the lawn. “Look, you’ll be the oldest one here.”

“I know, Andrea.” Nancy was mad at her for leaving, but she was clinging very tightly to the hug.

“Call me if anything bad happens. And if anything really bad happens, here.” She tucked a scrap of paper into Nancy’s hand.

“What’s that?”

“It’s Drew’s phone number.”

“The—Andrea. The guy who ran the Warrens’ cameras? I _knew_ you were talking to him.” She’d pulled back to scowl at Andrea. Out of corner of her eye, Andrea could see that their Mom was on the brink of coming over to interrupt them.

“I wasn’t,” Andrea said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’m really gonna miss you, okay?” She wiped a tear away and went to pull her younger sisters into a big hug. Christine was having a good couple days, very lucid and calm, although the threat of a tantrum about Andrea’s leaving was hanging heavily in the air that morning.

For the first time, that wasn’t Andrea’s problem. She kissed her parents’ cheeks one last time. “You call us as soon as you get in and let us know you’re safe, okay?” her dad said, sternly. Everybody waved goodbye.

She pushed a cassette tape in and hit play, and rolled down the windows as she picked up speed on the highway. She’d given Nancy her only copy of Drew’s number, but she’d had it memorized since he gave it to her last year. She’d never called, but the thought that she could had been a comfort in some rough times.

 

+

 

At the University of Rhode Island in the fall of 1976, when she was a junior, Andrea saw a poster stapled to a telephone pole advertising a lecture by Lorraine and Ed Warren. Tickets were exorbitantly expensive, she thought, but the Warrens had helped her family for free, so she couldn’t begrudge them the money. She turned around and walked back across campus the way she’d just come from, and marched right into the Student Affairs office and bought a ticket. She didn’t even have enough on her, she had to use her student account for the last ten dollars of it.

She didn’t expect Drew to still be working for them, because he must’ve been a college student back then, but there he was one week later in the center of the lecture hall, running the projector.

She sat all the way to the side and one row behind him, so she could watch Drew as well as the Warrens. Nancy, who’d joined Andrea at school as a freshman that year, had insisted on coming when she heard Andrea’s plans. “We should go say hi to him,” she said, nodding at Drew.

“After,” Andrea said. “He’s working.”

And then the Warrens entered to thunderous applause. Ed Warren was as handsome as ever, with his movie-star face, and Lorraine was still beautiful. It struck Andrea as a little unfair, because her mother had been carved up by her possession. Physically, Carolyn Perron had a collection of scars across her body from the violence she’d endured, and her face was prematurely lined. She looked like she’d aged ten years since that night. But Lorraine’s contact with the other side seemed to keep her preternaturally young; she looked exactly as Andrea remembered her.

The Warrens spoke seriously but had a sense of humor about themselves, and were very engaging. Andrea found herself getting drawn into the presentation, although it was nothing she hadn’t seen firsthand. She felt an icy rush of fear when they said they were going to show footage from one of their most infamous case files: surely, it wouldn’t be the Perron family?

But no, it was a man crying tears of blood, thrashing as they expelled a demonic spirit from him. Andrea had missed the main event, as it were, on the night of her mother’s exorcism, but the film clip was very hard to watch. She looked over at Nancy, who was sitting bolt upright, her eyes open wide and her hands tight around the arm rest. She pried one of Nancy’s hands up and held it in her lap until the film was over.

 

+

 

After the presentation, most of the crowd filtered out, but a few dozen milled around to try to speak with the Warrens or to discuss with each other what they’d just seen. Drew was loading the film strip back into its case as Nancy pulled Andrea toward him. He wouldn’t remember them, probably, it had been so long.

Nancy turned suddenly shy when they reached him, and stopped a few feet away and looked to Andrea. So it was Andrea who had to tap his shoulder.

He turned slowly, still fiddling with a knob on the projector, and when he saw them he said, “Wow, hey,” like he’d half expected them.

“You remember us?” Andrea asked, grimacing with the general unpleasantness of how they knew each other.

“Of course, yeah.” He put down the tape box and smiled at Andrea, and then he seemed to remember that Nancy was there, and looked to her when he said, “How are you?”

“We’re all right,” Nancy said, something defensive in her polite voice, as though Drew had asked out of pity because he knew how much they’d been through. Andrea started to answer too, but Ed Warren called up from the front of the room.

“Drew!” Ed beckoned him over, wanting him to join the conversation he and his wife were having with someone Andrea recognized as one of the Physics professors. Ed didn’t seem to recognize Andrea; at least, if he did, he didn’t give it away.

Drew hesitated. “I should—”

“Of course,” Andrea said. She’d realized once she saw him that she didn’t really want to speak to him in a crowded room, under the watchful eye of the Warrens. “Go ahead. But maybe, if you’ll be around for a few hours, would you meet me for coffee?”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, looking a little stunned but not unhappy. When Andrea glanced at her sister, Nancy had a similar expression, although hers was tilted more toward surprise.

She gave him the name of a place nearby and they agreed on six o’clock.

Andrea walked out with Nancy, and then headed across campus, walking her sister back to her dorm. “I know you think I’m being silly,” Nancy said.

“Of course I don’t,” Andrea said. “I just think you’re wrong.”

“You don’t know the first thing about him.”

“Except what he does for a living, that he’s had a steady job for, what, more than five years, that the Warrens trust him, that he helped save our family’s lives—”

“Oh, don’t get all worked up. I’m happy you’re going out with him if that’s what you want to do. I just wish you’d be careful.”

Nancy’s doubts out of the way, Andrea could get down to what she really wanted to talk about. “We’re not really _going out_ , anyway. Do you think? Does he think it’s a date?”

“Ugh,” Nancy said. “He knows it’s a date.” They were at the front door of her hall. “Come over right after so I know you’re not dead, okay?”

 

+

 

Drew was there when she showed up, and he’d gotten them a cozy table in the corner. He was as good looking as he had been in her memories, and his hair was a little less floppy, but not too neat, which would’ve disappointed her. She’d nursed an irrational fear that he might bring the Warrens with him, but of course they had better things to do, and he wouldn’t, anyway. “Drew, hi,” she said smiling at him and shrugging out of her jacket as she took the seat across from him.

He stood up partially out of his seat, and then sat back down abortively, as though he would’ve stood up for her if he’d seen her come in. “Hey,” he said, “you came. I mean.” He shook his head. “It’s good to see you.” He seemed older than her but not intimidatingly so, just as he had at their house back then.

She winced. “I know it’s strange, probably. I was happy you looked like you remembered me. And my sister, Nancy?” she added, offering the name because she had so many sisters and he could be forgiven if he didn’t remember it.

But actually, his mouth pulled up in a smile. “I don’t know if you know this, but I talked to Nancy once a couple of years ago. She called me up.”

That little sneak. “What did she want?”

“Well, I think mostly she wanted to know if what she remembered had really happened.”

“That probably sounds silly.” He shook his head but didn’t interrupt. “My parents would talk about it sometimes, but I think mostly they thought it was best not to dwell on it much. That bothered her, it made her feel alone with it, especially after I went to school.” Andrea looked out the window, watched an old woman and her poodle making slow progress along the sidewalk, the dog pausing to sniff at the autumn leaves in the grass. She had not meant to say so much so quickly, to get into all the heavy stuff right away. She felt, with Drew, the exact way she remembered: safe and curious, anxious to talk and to hear him talk.

“Here, can I get you a coffee?” Drew asked. “Or something?”

“Oh—sure,” she said, and was so flustered that she let him go up to the counter and buy it for her, even though she never let guys pay.

“Can I ask you something?” she said when they were drinking their coffees.

“Sure,” he said.

“Can people be—haunted?”

He frowned. “As in, possessed?”

“No, more like the way a house is haunted.”

“I don’t know if I understand,” he said.

“Did Nancy tell you about Christine?” Andrea asked. She really couldn’t tell.

Drew’s brow creased. “Your sister? What about her?”

“Oh,” Andrea said, and sighed. “She isn’t well. She was, I guess, traumatized, by what happened to our mom.” Drew’s eyes were round with sympathy, and she kind of wished she hadn’t brought it up. “So, I don’t know. Have you ever seen anything like that before? She’s—it’s like she relives it all the time. We had to take her to a residential care facility. She can’t, um.” Andrea looked away and willed herself not to cry. She kept the tears back, but she couldn’t say anymore just then.

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know.” He toyed with his mug between his hands. “Seeing something like that can sometimes be harder for family members than for the person who’s being possessed,” he said, quietly, seriously. “And for a child it can... reshape the world, in a bad way, if it comes at an impressionable time.”

“But April and Cindy were younger,” Andrea said. She knew she sounded like a petulant child herself, railing against how unfair it was, wanting Drew to fix it.

“I don’t know why it happened like that,” he said, looking so sorry and helpless that she felt bad.

She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to lay all of this on you, honestly. I don’t want you to think—Christine isn’t why I wanted to meet you.”

She was flattered when he visibly perked up at this. “When I talked to Nancy,” he said, and looked up at her through his lashes, “she told me where you went to school. And I thought, when Lorraine told me we were putting on a talk here, maybe I’ll see you. And then I did. So.” He was blushing, sweetly, as he admitted this, his hands tight around his mug. “I’m glad.”

She got him to talk about himself a little, his family and where he was from, and she tried to keep things light. At some point he disappeared to use the cafe’s phone, and when he returned he looked put out. “I may have to run, I’m sorry,” he said, although they’d been talking for hours, well past what should’ve been dinner time.

“What happened?” she asked.

“We have a job across town tonight.” Him and the Warrens, Andrea assumed. “But our cameraman has the flu, he can’t come. We’ve got to find somebody to fill in, which may not be possible on a few hours’ notice.”

Andrea actually sat perfectly still for a second, holding her breath. “I could do it,” she said, when she was composed enough.

His brow creased. “What?”

“I could come, and run the cameras, and help.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. She had thought about this a lot, hadn’t known if she’d ever get the opportunity. “I mean, I do know the drill.”

Drew looked skeptical, almost nervous. “You don’t know how to use the camera equipment.”

“I do, actually,” Andrea said. “I’ve been taking audio-visual electives all three years and even at the end of high school.

“Andrea.”

“What?”

“It isn’t a good idea. What if something happened?”

“You do it all the time.”

“I’m a professional.”

“I’m not scared.”

“You should be, at least a little!” He looked chastened at the volume of his voice. “Sorry. I’m just—you’re serious?”

“Yes,” she said. “I want to help someone else, you know?”

He looked at her for a long moment, and then she knew he was going to agree. “I’ll ask Ed and Lorraine,” he said.

She smiled and took his hand where it rested on the table. It was the first time she had touched his skin.

 

+

 

Nine hours later, in the gentle light of the sunrise, Andrea helped Drew load equipment into the back of the van. “So, that was a nice first date,” he said, smiling sort of self deprecatingly and sadly at her. He was visibly exhausted, and she probably looked as bad as she felt. Her hair was most of the way out of its braid, and her clothes were disheveled and stained with the black smoke that had started pouring out from under a closet door at three in the morning. She’d been terrified the whole time, hadn’t had a moment to sit quietly next to Drew, but she had loved working with him in an exciting new way that she hadn’t known to hope for.

She took a step toward him, put a hand on his waist, and kissed him, both of them standing at the open van door. His broad palm on her cheek felt just like she thought it would, steadying and gentle. “It was my favorite date,” she said. “Thanks for taking me.”


End file.
